The invention relates, on the one hand, to an ordering system for print products, wherein a print product can be defined in an article oriented database of the ordering system and a job order to produce a print product can be issued by means of a user interface of the ordering system, and, on the other hand, the invention relates to a method for costing the production of a print product, wherein a job order for production is issued by means of an interface of such ordering system, and wherein after issue of the job order, the production of the print product is costed based on parameters of the print product by means of a costing module of a Management Information System, which controls a networked graphic production.
Ordering systems, as described above, are generally known and increasingly provided to potential customers through user interfaces configured as internet portals. The actual ordering system is implemented as a database application on a computer connected to the internet. In the database, the particular articles, which can be ordered through the ordering system, are listed with their respective prices and possibly with additional specific information, like e.g. arithmetic cost estimation, the respective inventory, external sources or internal production lead times.
Through the ordering system, a customer selects one or plural print products, defines the respectively required print-runs and issues the job order through a respective button in the user interface. The job order is transmitted to the database application, where it is processed possibly in an automated manner. For example, a request for ordered print products can be automatically transmitted to the warehouse, a shipping ticket and an invoice for the customer can be automatically generated, in particular, the job order is transmitted to production in order to produce print products which are not in inventory.
In modern graphic production shops, the prepress-, press- and post press systems, used for the production of print products, down to the packaging systems and loading systems, are networked. The various execution systems communicate amongst one another and with a central controlling Management Information System (MIS) in Job Definition Format (JDF).
JDF is a generally known format, which was developed and is being maintained by the Consortium “International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress” (CIP4-Consortium, www.cip4.org). The development of JDF is based on the objective to standardize communications between print shop, designer, advertising agency, customer of print products and subcontractor of contractors in the context of a networked graphic production for all production options and eventualities in a flexible manner and without restrictions.
According to the intention of the CIP4-Consortium, JDF is to be used as a standard data format for describing processes and products, not only in all production areas of a networked print shop, in particular, in sales, job costing and job processing, production planning and control, in actual production in prepress, press, and postpress and shipping, in the cross sectional areas materials- and warehouse management, financial- and payroll accounting, controlling, cost accounting, and quality assurance.
In a JDF file, a job shall only be described once in one format, which is understood by all process partners, over language- and platform boundaries in external communications by customers and subcontractors and their execution systems in the man-machine and machine-machine communication. Through the vertical integration of data, on the one hand, of the production process, and, on the other hand, of the commercial departments in a comprehensible and integrated data structure, JDF facilitates a high level of transparency of all production processes, a standardized documentation of the relevant target and actual data and an integrated production control.
A prerequisite for the automated costing and production of the ordered print products on JDF based network execution systems is the basic description of a job defined in the article based database in the central MIS. Since the description of the job in JDF requires production specific data, which cannot be stored in the article based databases of the known ordering systems, said definition of the job is performed manually in the state of the art MIS.